


Touched the Summer Sun

by TheFandomLesbian



Series: Angela's Raulson One-Shots [31]
Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: Angst, Blind Cordelia, F/F, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, foxxay - Freeform, goode-day, pre-Seven Wonders, raulson - Freeform, romance ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 09:10:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17464622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFandomLesbian/pseuds/TheFandomLesbian
Summary: While trying to wash up from her afternoon in the greenhouse, Misty accidentally sprays Cordelia in the face with the garden hose. The results are catastrophic.





	Touched the Summer Sun

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt requesting hurt/comfort where Foxxay has panic attacks. I'm already planning a scene in my next multichapter where Misty has panic attacks related to fire, so I decided to omit that part to keep from repeating myself. This was the result.   
> Title from "In the Back of My Mind" by Fleetwood Mac

The sun sank below the purple horizon as Misty jogged up from the yard with dirty feet and knees. Golden colors painted the sky a million hues, bronze and gold and pink streaked with red. Misty grabbed the garden hose from the side of the house and stood on the cement porch, eyes fixed on the sky in the distance.  _ Every time an artist dies, _ she thought,  _ God lets them paint the sky. _ Her grandmother had given her that wisdom when she was a small child who wanted to play with her watercolors. Misty had never been a good artist--all of the colors bled together until they made brown. This artist, however, had done a good job. They had stripped all of the clouds from the sky except for the faint wispy ones highlighting the golden hues. 

The stony surface of the concrete scraped her feet, but they had hardened into a thick, calloused surface from living without shoes for awhile. She rubbed the soles of her feet on the rock surface to try to dislodge the largest chunks of mud. Then, she turned on the hose. The gentle spray worked at her hands first, getting all of the muck off of her fingers and from under her cruddy fingernails--she had worked on chewing them down so less junk got stuck under them when she gardened, but nothing really seemed to help. She had taken to using her pocket knife to dig under her nails and scrape the dirt out from under them. 

Evening birds tweeted their birdsong to the cooling air. Misty climbed up another step to lean against the pillars as she lifted her feet and sprayed them off. The soles of her feet had icky splinters in them. She reached down to try to dig out one of the painful ones, a thorn which had punctured her flesh, and she held the hose off to the side, watching the water run off of the porch into the dry rose bushes as she carefully pinched the thorn from between her thumb and index finger. 

Behind her, the front door slammed shut. “Misty?” Misty flinched in surprise and whirled around. The stream of water from the garden house sprayed Cordelia across the face. Panicked hands dropped her cane and covered her eyes. She yelped and stumbled back. Misty dropped the garden hose, but like some kind of rogue snake, it bounced off the ground and shot across Cordelia again before it rolled off of the porch and landed in the yard. 

“I’m sorry--” Misty climbed the steps, but Cordelia staggered sideways--dangerously close to the edge of the porch. “Hey, careful.” Misty nibbled her lower lip between her teeth as she approached the blind witch. Cordelia’s labored breathing was audible. “Are you okay? Miss Cordelia?” As Cordelia side-stepped again, this time teetering over the edge, Misty seized her by the waist. “Hey, let’s, uh, let’s step  _ away _ from the edge of the porch over the rose bushes, shall we?”

Claw-like hands seized Misty by the wrist and scratched at her. Cordelia made a thin shriek. She began to stumble backward, and MIsty held fast to her, standing steadily on the edge of the porch. “Get off--Let me go--” Cordelia’s voice shivered. Misty tried again to pull her away from the unprotected edge of the porch. Cordelia’s fear grew into panic. She wrenched herself away. Misty seized her again, but it was too late to restore their balance. Rolling in the air, Misty landed on her back on top of the rose bushes. 

All of the thorns of the aging branches pierced her sheer clothing and her skin. Misty howled in pain like she had landed on a porcupine; she tossed a hand over her face to protect it from the strings of thorny branches. Cordelia rolled from on top of her and crawled away. “Miss Cordelia--” In spite of the blinding pain and the impact of the fall which had knocked all of the air out of her lungs, Misty strained to wriggle out of the agonizing thorny bush in pursuit of Cordelia, who landed on her ass in the yard, gasping for breath and shaking all over. The soil of the garden and the grass in the yard had become a soppy mess from the garden horse pouring water into the earth. “Hey, hey--can you hear me?” Misty crawled on her hands and knees. Every time she placed her hand on the ground, it pushed thorns deeper into her sensitive palms. “Miss Cordelia?”  _ Don’t touch her. You scared her before. _ Licking her lips nervously, she paused at Cordelia’s side. As she sat back on her rump, the branches of the bush that had dragged with her pierced her skin again. 

Cordelia didn’t answer her. The front of her shirt was wet. Water ran down her face and dribbled from her hair. Misty plucked a few thorns from her hands and grabbed the big branches from her clothes before she brushed the back of her hand against Cordelia’s. She found just as many stickers in Cordelia’s skin. “Here--lemme get these briars outta your skin.” Cordelia hyperventilated. Swaying where she sat, Misty took her by the shoulder, steadying. She feared Cordelia would collapse--though, granted, sitting on the ground didn’t leave her far to fall. Her chin and lower jaw trembled all over. “Miss Cordelia, can you hear me?” Misty asked again. Unsteady breath hiccuped out of her chest. “Here--you know who I am, remember?” Misty wasn’t sure how helpful she was being. She took one of Cordelia’s bloodied hands and picked the thorns out of the palm, and then she placed it on her own cheek. 

A shudder passed through Cordelia’s body at the first touch, but she didn’t pull away. “Muh--Muh--Muh--” Misty nodded. It was a close enough guess. Cordelia shivered from head to toe, like Misty had dropped her into a snowbank instead of a thorny bush. Her sticky, bloody  hand roamed Misty’s face, touching her lips and her nose and her eyebrows and the bridge between her eyes. “Buh--Buh--Buh--” Her buffering lips refused to form a coherent thought. 

Misty scooted closer to her. “Hey, it’s alright. It’s just me.” She smiled into Cordelia’s hand, trying to be reassuring.  _ Is she having some kind of conniption? _ It wasn’t like any kind of seizure that Misty had ever seen before, but granted, she hadn’t seen many. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It was an accident.”  _ What the hell is wrong with her? _ Sweat ran off of Cordelia’s face and marred her sunglasses. Her other fumbling hand tried to remove them from her face. Misty reached to help her. “Take it easy, I got it. Let’s not hurt you some more.” Her whole body stung with pinpricks where the bush had pierced her skin. 

The bright sunset touched golden rays to Cordelia’s mutilated skin as Misty guided the dark glasses off of her face.  _ Of course.  _ The acid burns dribbled water right across the area the hose had struck. Misty hitched a quiet breath. “Are you okay?” she asked as Cordelia’s shaking hand wrapped around her forearm. “Can you hear me?” Cordelia nodded. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

Cordelia’s mouth formed a couple different trembling shapes. She licked her lips. “I--I didn’t mean--” Her voice was a thin croak, and every word trembled with effort as she forced all of the quivering muscles inside of her to cooperate. Her panic had passed over her and left her shaking. “--to scratch you.” 

_ Scratch me? _ Misty had almost forgotten that Cordelia had tried to fight her off. Whatever damage that Cordelia’s dull fingernails had done, the rose bush had certainly done tenfold. “I didn’t mean to drop us into a rose bush,” she said sheepishly. Cordelia reached for her, fumbling in the air and then on her body. Misty eased up beside her and wrapped her into a tight hug. “Here.” Her clothes were wet and covered with mud, and she doubted there was a surface on her body that wasn’t bleeding, but Cordelia’s hair smelled nice, and she had soft skin like the petals of a flower--the petals of a rose, but with no thorns on the stem. Cordelia shook in her arms. Tears fell from her eyes. “It’s okay. Are you hurt?” She shook her head. “See, we didn’t break anything. We’re just fine.” 

Somehow, she doubted sitting out in the yard in the setting sun with the grass becoming a marsh from the running hose water counted as fine. “I’m s-sorry,” Cordelia whispered. “I fuh-fuh…” She drifted off, and then she tried again. “I forgot where I was… fuh-for a second.” Misty brushed the back of her hand against Cordelia’s cheek, trying to catch the tears where they fell, but Cordelia flinched. Misty took her hand away. 

“It’s okay. I understand.” Cordelia rested her head against Misty’s shoulder. “Has that happened before?” 

Cordelia’s jaw shifted. “Once. I was alone.” 

_ Alone? _ Misty studied Cordelia’s face in the light of the waning sunset.  _ You shouldn’t need to be alone. Not for that, especially.  _ Cordelia brushed her hand against Misty’s wrist again, and this time, she took her hand with confidence and placed it on her face--an apology for her reflexive flinching moments before. Misty smiled into Cordelia’s hand. “The sky is pretty tonight,” Misty said. She lifted her eyes past Cordelia’s face to the sky above. The pink streaks grew duller and dimmer, the golden rays melting into blue as the orange and darkness battled it out, neutralizing one another in the middle. 

Marbled eyes blinked closed. “Yes. It is.” The birds sailed overhead into the sunset, into the wispy clouds. A distant plane pumped out gray clouds of exhaust with a rumbling motor. “Thank you…” 

The ground beneath them was quickly becoming a cold puddle. Misty didn’t know where the hose had landed, but their clothes were soaked and streaked with mud. Whatever she had planned to help by washing her hands and feet, the effect had been lost. Misty kissed the inside of Cordelia’s dirty palm where it rested on her face. “Let me turn off the water, before Fiona kills me for the plumbing bill.”  _ I’m turning the yard into my own swamp.  _ She crawled across the ground and turned off the water, and the last few droplets squirted out of it. Returning to Cordelia’s side, she offered a hand and tugged her up. “C’mon. I’ve got your cane.” Cordelia swayed on her feet, but Misty kept an arm tight around her waist, refusing to let her stumble. “Do you want me to help you change clothes? I can throw these in the wash really fast so nobody notices the difference.” 

Cordelia’s face flushed. “I don’t want to be a bother.” 

“You’re not a bother. You’re my friend.” 

At the final word, Cordelia clutched Misty’s hand tightly--almost tight enough to hurt. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Friends.”  _ That’s strange. _ Misty grinned at her, nonetheless, and kissed a spot of dirt off of her cheek. Cordelia blushed. “Alright. That sounds fine. Thank you.” 


End file.
